Lebanon… Reading Reality from a Different Angle

Detailed summary

Lebanon is in a deep impasse. It lacks the capacity to drive the Israeli occupation out of the territory it seized in the last two wars, in which it destroyed more than 60…

Lebanon is in a deep impasse. It lacks the capacity to drive the Israeli occupation out of the territory it seized in the last two wars, in which it destroyed more than 60 southern Lebanese villages and towns. Nor can it extend the authority of the legitimate state and implement the provisions of the Taif Agreement on confining weapons to the state without a military clash, given the intransigence of Hezbollah, and of Iran behind it, in refusing to hand over those weapons, even though they failed to provide Lebanon with a protective umbrella, and the balance of deterrence spoken of for decades has collapsed under successive Israeli strikes.

On the first front, it has become clear that there was haste in signing the trilateral agreement, or the "framework agreement" as the government preferred to call it, which was never submitted to the cabinet or to parliament for debate. Constitutional formalities and institutional requirements aside, the agreement was not anchored in the 1949 Armistice Agreement between Lebanon and Israel or in UN Security Council Resolution 1701 of 2006, and so it lacks the reference points from which any new agreement with Israel should have proceeded.

It has also become clear that the clause in the agreement freezing any legal or judicial action by Lebanon against Israel is no more than throwing dust in the eyes. The official Lebanese justification held that this path remains open to Lebanon whenever it wishes. But Israel's practiced procrastination suggests that it has been closed indefinitely, which is a great moral, legal, and political loss for Lebanon.

In practice, too, the idea of "pilot areas" has faltered, and the "pilot" has been confined to the town of Zawtar al-Gharbiya alone. The daily shelling of unoccupied areas and the bulldozing of villages in occupied areas, which Israel calls the yellow line zone, are glaring evidence of its unwillingness to end the status quo.

Opening of the article, excerpted from Asharq Al-Awsat. To read the rest, open the article on the publisher's site.